April 24, 2013

Fake Is The New Real.


Apparently, the market for fake Twitter followers is exploding.

According to The New York Times...
"There are now more than two dozen services that sell fake Twitter accounts... there are now as many as 20 million fake follower accounts."
Being the Luddite that I am, I am way behind the curve in attracting my fair share of fake followers. As far as I know, I don't have any. I mean, unless you count Cinderella and Barney the Dinosaur as fake.

It seems that anyone who's anyone has fake followers.  Mitt Romney, Rachel Maddow, Lady Gaga and even President Obama have been known to have thousands of fake followers. But stupid me? I'm stuck with these annoying real ones.

I think fake followers are way better. The fake ones retweet everything you send out. They don't ridicule your stupid tweets or call you a douche bag.  And, according to The Times,  they only cost about 18 bucks a thousand. That's about what I make from my book at Amazon.

I think fake followers are the greatest invention since inflatable girlfriends. By the way, do they sell inflatable boyfriends? Or just battery operated boyfriend bits?

I think fake followers make great gifts. Let's say you know someone who's having a tough go of it. Can't find a job. Nobody pays any attention to him. Just send him five thousand fake followers (only 60 bucks!) and pretty soon he'll have his own social media company and be speaking at marketing summits.

One of the great things about the web is that fake is realer than real. When I read something on the web, how do I know if it's real or not? I don't. I just assume that because it's on the web it's total bullshit. It's fake. It's fabulous!

It seems like only yesterday that a fake tweet from the Associated Press reported that there were two explosions at the White House and temporarily wiped out $136 billion in investor equity. Hold it. It was yesterday.

It's not like fake boobs or fake hair. You look at them and in about a nanosecond you know they're not real. The girls with fake boobs always look like they're about to topple over and the guys with fake hair look like they found a dead cat and slapped it on their head. But the web? Oh no, on the web, fake is just enhanced reality.

I think we need even more fake stuff on the web. Wouldn't it be great if we could have fake "likes?" Oh, wait a minute. We have millions of those.

Well, how about fake emails that tell us we won the lottery and fake scam stuff from PayPal and eBay and...oh, yeah, we have a ton of that shit, too.

Okay, but what if Facebook did an IPO with a fake value of $100 billion? Oops, they tried that.

I know. I'll start a fake blog. It'll be huge! I'll talk about how everything that's supposed to be real is fake. And all the names of the people who leave comments on the blog will be fake. And I'll focus on all the crap you read by fake experts...

...wait a minute. I already do that.



4 comments:

Chris Seiger said...

So I shouldn't be posting with my real name?


There's always been a facade around the web, just as there has around advertising. Does anyone really think Charlie Schwab gives two fucks about them? Or that people smile at Wal-Mart? Or that you'll have an orgasm by washing your hair with Herbal Essences, if that brand even exists anymore?


Well, does anyone believe that every Twitter user or Facebook account is real? Of-fucking-course not. The web is a cesspool of twisted information and op-ed masqurading as fact.


We know it's bullshit, but we let it slide. We get it. Believe at your own risk. Skepticism is the new trust.

Neil Cowan said...

Love it. Wrote a blog on faking it last week http://neilcowan.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/new-business-faking-it/
but this was attacking agencies with no true beliefs...no world view of their own.

Chuck Nyren said...

I thought of you while reading about this other form of fake:

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/iab-rally-industry-against-bogus-publishers-and-bots-148759

geoff (or is it?) said...

Rattle my universe!

Luckily it's only online PR hacks who fake stuff. So I can at least go home knowing all those news stories on celebrities are real.